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Month: July 2018

Access to campus child care is a key factor in determining if single mothers in college will graduate within six years, according to the latest in a series of reports released Wednesday by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Just 8 percent of single mothers who enroll in college graduate with an associate or bachelor’s degree within six years, compared to 49 percent of women students who are not mothers, stated the report, “Investing in Single Mothers’ Higher Education: Costs and Benefits to Individuals, Families, and Society.” In addition, the vast majority, 89 percent, of single student mothers have low incomes and no money of their own or from their families to cover college expenses.

Citing: Investing in Single Mothers’ Higher Education: Costs and Benefits to Individuals, Families, and Society by Barbara Gault, Jessica Milli, and Lindsey Reichlin Cruse at Institute for Women’s Policy Research, June 2018

There have been a lot of headlines about the gender wage gap among full-time wage and salary workers. Researchers have found that pay disparities persist due to a combination of women working in lower-paid occupations, taking time off to have kids and discrimination. But what about the world of online platforms, like Lyft and Instacart, where wages are often set equally for a given task and the customer doesn’t see the gender of the worker before the job is booked? Turns out there’s a gender wage gap there, too. A study released last week by economists from Stanford University using data from more than a million Uber drivers uncovered a 7% hourly earnings gap between men and women on the ride-sharing platform.

Citing: The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence from Over A Million Rideshare Drivers by Cody Cook, Rebecca Diamond, Jonathan Hall, John A. List, and Paul Oyer at National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2018

Men make more than women in their side hustles. Women Uber drivers earn 93 cents on the dollar compared to men, according to a study distributed Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. “The uniqueness of our data — knowing exactly the production and compensation functions — permits us to completely unpack the underlying determinants of the gender earnings gap,” the researchers wrote. The authors found that the gender gap is caused by three factors: How long they’ve been driving on the platform, preferences over where/when to work and driving speed. The authors include economists from the Graduate School of Business and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University, and Jonathan Hall, chief economist and director of public policy at Uber.

Citing: The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence from Over A Million Rideshare Drivers by Cody Cook, Rebecca Diamond, Jonathan Hall, John A. List, and Paul Oyer at National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2018

The U.S. Census provides important information on communities, but it won’t be counting the number of LGBTQ people in 2020 – and that’s a problem, according to a new report. The Census Bureau will count same-sex marriages, as it has in the past. But the Bureau rescinded a question that would have asked people about their sexual orientation and gender identity. Matthew Caruchet, author of the Economic Opportunity Institute report, said the question could have provided important information on an area with little research: the LGBT pay gap. He compared this issue to the women’s pay gap, which can draw on decades of census data.

What gig economy? Fewer working as freelancers, contractors than believed

By Paul Davidson | | 6.7.2018

So you think an ever-growing share of American workers are Uber drivers or freelancers whose offices are tables at Starbucks? Think again. A Labor Department report Thursday casts doubt on the conventional wisdom that the workforce is shifting from traditional full-time employees to independent contractors, temporary workers and other contingent laborers. About 16 million Americans, or 10.4% of the workforce, were contingent workers or had other alternative work arrangements in May 2017, according to the report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s surprisingly below the 10.9% of the workers in that category in 2005.

When people of color ask for raises, they’re a lot less likely than white workers to get the salary bump they request, according to a new study by PayScale, a firm that analyzes compensation data. Women of color, a group that includes African Americans, Asians, Hispanics and other non-white people, are 19 percent less likely than white men to get the raise they ask for, according to the survey of about 160,000 respondents. Non-white men were 25 percent more likely to be turned down for a salary increase. “Everyone’s asking, but they’re getting different answers,” said Lydia Frank, vice president of content strategy at PayScale. “I think with the current climate in this country and the systemic racism that we’ve seen in other areas, I don’t think it’s terribly surprising.”

While ridehail driving and other male-dominated sectors have been at the forefront in conversations about the future of work, the working lives of domestic workers like housecleaners and nannies usually aren’t included. By bringing these three types of platforms and workers together, this report complicates simple narratives about technology’s impact on labor markets and highlights the convergent and divergent challenges workers face when using labor platforms to find and carry out their work. Interviewees reported increased financial and personal risk due to platform policy and design loopholes. For example, workers with marginalized identities (e.g. people of color and undocumented workers; largely women) report inequitable conditions that arise from common features such as rating systems.

After decades of convergence, the gender gap in employment outcomes has recently plateaued in many rich countries, despite the fact that women have increased their investment in human capital over this period. We propose a hypothesis to reconcile these two trends: that when they are making key human capital decisions, women in modern cohorts underestimate the impact of motherhood on their future labor supply. Using an event-study framework, we show substantial and persistent employment effects of motherhood in U.K. and U.S. data. We then provide evidence that women do not anticipate these effects. Upon becoming parents, women (and especially more educated women) adopt more negative views toward female employment (e.g., they are more likely to say that women working hurts family life), suggesting that motherhood serves as an information shock to their beliefs. Women on average (and, again, more educated women in particular) report that parenthood is harder than they expected. We then look at longer horizons—are young women’s expectations about future labor supply correct when they make their key educational decisions?

Gender pay equity is a significant issue in media production — in front of and behind the camera, and above and below the line. Existing and historical gender-based job segregation, gender stereotyping, and differential negotiating power can lead to wide differences in pay for individuals who play similar roles or work at similar levels – due to different scale rates, different negotiated rates, or both. In light of these concerns, Local 871 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, its Territories and Canada (IATSE) retained Working IDEAL to perform an in-depth assessment of gender bias in compensation for four female-dominated Local 871 crafts involved in film, television and other media production: Script Supervisors, Production Coordinators, Assistant Production Coordinators and Art Department Coordinators.

The report analyses the ways in which unpaid care work is recognized and organized, the extent and quality of care jobs and their impact on the well-being of individuals and society. A key focus of this report is the persistent gender inequalities in households and the labour market, which are inextricably linked with care work. These gender inequalities must be overcome to make care work decent and to ensure a future of decent work for both women and men. The report contains a wealth of original data drawn from over 90 countries and details transformative policy measures in five main areas: care, macroeconomics, labour, social protection and migration. It also presents projections on the potential for decent care job creation offered by remedying current care work deficits and meeting the related targets of the Sustainable Development Goals.

A new report, released by Jobs With Justice Education Fund and the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First, identifies the large corporations that have been most involved in wage and hour collective action lawsuits. Grand Theft Paycheck: The Large Corporations Shortchanging Their Workers’ Wages finds wage theft is pervasive in big business. A detailed examination of court records reveals that hundreds of corporations have paid out billions of dollars to resolve wage theft lawsuits, and many corporations are repeat offenders. Walmart has paid the most in settlements, but the list of the most-penalized employers also includes Bank of America, Wells Fargo and other large banks and insurance companies as well as major technology and healthcare corporations.